Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow has told how she experienced one of the "darkest and most painfully debilitating" times of her life when she suffered from post natal depression following the birth of her second child.

She had expected to feel "euphoria" as she did when daughter Apple was born in May 2004, but when Moses arrived in 2006 it was a very different story.

Writing on her blog, the blonde actress said: "When Moses came into the world in 2006, I expected to have another period of euphoria following his birth, much the way I had when my daughter was born two years earlier."

"Instead I was confronted with one of the darkest and most painfully debilitating chapters of my life.

"For about five months I had, what I can see in hindsight as post-natal depression, and since that time, I have wanted to know more about it.

"Not only from a hormonal and scientific standpoint, and why so many of us experience it, but from the perspective of other women who have gone through it."